Gregory's ServerSomeone popped into my mentions yesterday and tried to argue that we can and should respond to the climate catastrophe by changing our consumption patterns—reducing, reusing, and recycling; carpooling; buying from artisans rather than big firms; etc.
Undoubtedly, many of us could improve the way we buy and use stuff and thereby nibble away at the margins of the climate problem. But no, we are not going to solve problems like “sequential heat waves that kill at least tens of thousands of people every summer” by recycling our glass bottles.
What I really want to talk about, though, is the idea that our pattern of purchases and use is somehow a neutral and organic expression of our preferences that we can just adjust on a whim. It’s not.
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#ClimateChange #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe
Much of what we purchase, use, dispose, and replace is not the result of neutral preference, but in response to incentives, disincentives, and outright command imposed on us by people with power over our lives.
In much of the world, for example, the physical built environment was designed by people in power to require the purchase, regular refueling, and maintenance of personal automobiles to complete trips of anything more than a few kilometers (and often even less than that).
In Georgia in 2011, for example, a mother tried crossing a street from a bus stop to her home. Using the nearest crosswalk would have added a mile to their journey across the street. They were struck by a man driving a van—a habitual criminal driver—who killed her son and injured the rest.
That physical environment was physically constructed in such a way that the simple act of transiting a few dozen feet of public space requires the purchase and ownership of a car *at the risk of death.*
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018656/amp/Raquel-Nelson-sentenced-12-months-probation-death-son-jaywalking.html
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#CarCluture
Much of what we purchase, use, dispose, and replace is not the result of neutral preference, but in response to incentives, disincentives, and outright command imposed on us by people with power over our lives.
In much of the world, for example, the physical built environment was designed by people in power to require the purchase, regular refueling, and maintenance of personal automobiles to complete trips of anything more than a few kilometers (and often even less than that).